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Way up on the Canada border

Greetings from Manning Park British Columbia! We started our journey in Marblemount, WA where we toured the North Cascades National Park communications center and Wilderness Information Center. We then began the approximately 3 hour drive to British Columbia. The Canadian border guards must not have been in a good mood as we were stuck at the border for almost half an hour. About two hours later, we ﬁnally pulled up to our bunkhouse, graciously vacated for the time we will be here by the rangers who normally occupy this building. We had sushi for dinner, which was a lot of fun to make. Ben also prepared some bread dough to bake fresh tomorrow. We also went about dividing the daily tasks to make things a little more organized. From the beginning, we’ve been so excited to begin our trail work. We knew it was going to be a lot of fun! We’ve been keeping a running journal of our days here. The crew has decided to blog as a group taking turns on various nights to write down our group adventures. Below are a couple of our ﬁrst days together. Day 5: It’s been another beautiful day working in Manning Provincial Park. We started early and continued working on the Lightning Lake Loop. Today was our ﬁrst wacky fashion Friday, where we all dressed in wacky clothes we picked up at value village on our way to Canada. We continued to lop, level, and saw our way down the trail. Yesterday we discovered that one of the retaining walls along the trail had collapsed; we made repairing it one of our goals for the day. The whole crew pitched in cutting logs, carrying rocks and moving dirt to repair and replace the retaining wall over the course of the work day. Tomorrow we head out to the Strike Lake Campground to work on a more remote set of trails. Can’t wait to blog about it when we return! Day 6: Last night was our fourth and ﬁnal night in the ranger barracks in the Manning Park housing complex. We woke up late to a beautiful day and had breakfast at about 8am. We then began to pack up our personal stuff - like clothes and toiletries - and our group gear for our eight-day, seven-night backcountry working trip. After all the gear was packed and in the car, we cleaned the ranger barracks. We mopped the ﬂoors, vacuumed the rooms and washed all of our dishes. We then shuttled ourselves and our bags to the Lightning Lakes trailhead. After a quick lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we began our three and a half mile hike, in the pouring rain, to Strike Camp. Thankfully, once we arrived, the rain subsided and we were able to pitch our tents. We then cooked dinner and went to sleep. Tomorrow we will ﬁnish work on the lightning lake loop and start work to refurbish the Strike Camp. See you tomorrow! Peace out! SCA International crew signing out for the week.

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The Student Conservation Association (SCA) is America’s conservation corps. Our members protect and restore national parks, marine sanctuaries, cultural landmarks and community green spaces in all 50 states.